The Gardener’s Guide to Getting Clients

Hey there, this is Heather from Wise Owl Marketing and welcome to this week’s blog video. We are talking about gardening today.

We started a garden as a family this year. This is the first year we have ever done it and we had our first salad last night with tomatoes from the garden, and I have to tell you I felt just amazingly proud. They were delicious and it was so much fun to know that we grew these.

We got the dirt, we prepared our soil, we planted, we watered, we nurtured, and we were eventually able to create something that we were enjoying as a family at dinner. And it was a very cool experience.

And I was thinking about how it relates to our business, and it’s really very similar.

Preparing Your Soil

In your business, you’re going to have to do things like set up your foundation, which is really like preparing the ground; you’re preparing your soil.

This might be building your website, it might be starting your email list, it might be creating whatever the process you’re going to work with your clients is, so that you’re able to work through that and deliver great results for them.

That is really similar to the “preparing your soil” part of gardening.

Planting Seeds

The next thing is planting seeds. When you’re thinking about having a garden, you’re thinking about, “Okay, well, I want to grow some tomatoes, and maybe I want to grow some peppers, or some cucumbers,” or whatever it is that you’re doing. Each seed that you plant is something that you hope down the road you’re going to be able to harvest.

Well, in your business, the seeds look like your marketing. So, it might be that you’ve created a lead magnet that you’re going to put out there and you’re running an ad in order to get people to see it. It might be creating a blog post or a video that you’re going to share. Each piece of content that you create (once it’s done) is something that will allow you to harvest over, and over, and over again (not like planting a garden where you only get it for one season).

Digging In Right

So, go ahead and think about where you are in your business. Are you at the planting seeds stage? Do you already have your foundation in place? Do you already have your lead magnet and those kind, of things? Then you need to be thinking about doing your podcast, your videos, your ebooks, things like that in order to help you plant those seeds.

If you don’t have your ground prepared you’re not ready for that yet. You need to be aware of what stage you are in and know that if you don’t have all of the foundation pieces in your business yet, then getting on Facebook and doing your marketing and those kinds of things is really going to be a waste of time, because you’re sending people to a website that wasn’t set up to convert yet, or you’re sending people to a Facebook page where they’re going to get distracted and end up clicking somewhere else.

You need to create those things before you start planting the seeds.

Keep Watering and Weeding to Continue Growth

In addition to planting the seeds, you need to water. You can’t just plant the seed and expect it to grow.

We live in the Midwest and we do get a little bit of rain here and there, but it also gets really, really hot, and if we hadn’t been watering our garden and weeding it and making sure that it was getting sunlight and nurturing it along the way, we wouldn’t have had tomatoes for dinner.

With your business, it’s the same way. You can put those blog posts out there and you can have your podcast, your YouTube channel, you might be doing a Facebook ad and running traffic to a lead magnet, or something like that, but you can’t just set it and forget it. If you were not nurturing the people after they subscribed, you’re not going to be able to harvest those new clients and customers down the road.

You need to create a way that you’re going to stay in touch with your clients. So, that could be your follow-up email series. Maybe you’re updating old blog posts and sharing those kind of refreshed with new ideas.

Maybe you’re taking a look at your Google analytics and figuring out, “Okay, what is my audience interested in? They seem to really like these articles here. I’m going to plant more seeds similar to this, or more seeds on this topic.”

And also taking a look at the results your clients are getting. Are there things you can be doing in order to improve your systems, in order to improve your products so that your clients get better results, so that they’re out there planting seeds for you through their word of mouth?

It’s the type of thing that is your business, it’s a long term investment of time, you need to be making those investments along the way. You don’t want to do it out of order. Watering dirt if you haven’t planted seeds isn’t going to get you anything, and if you try to plant seeds in crappy soil, you’re not going to get good produce out of it.

Quick Recap

So, go ahead and take a look at where you are in your business and make sure that you’re doing these three things:

1. You’re preparing the ground, you’re setting up your foundation
2. You’re planting the seeds, you’re doing your blog posts and you’re doing your marketing so that people can get into your funnel
3. You’re nurturing the people that you have attracted after they opt in

So, that’s it. Go ahead and let me know in the comments what you think of this and what stage you are in your business. And don’t forget to share and to subscribe so that you get notifications of next week’s video.

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